NAU.OH.97.68.37B
161253
Martin Torrez (Part 2)
Interviewed by Delia Ceballos Muñoz
June 15, 2006
Torrez: Birthday. New Year’s. Christmas.
Muñoz: Were any of those celebrations celebrated-in Flagstaff did they have a Christmas parade? Or did they have a celebration for the community, do you remember? You know, like Cinco de Mayo. Did they ever celebrate Cinco de Mayo in Flagstaff, do you remember?
Torrez: I don’t think so.
Muñoz: How about did they celebrate the independence of-September the ninth? September sixteenth, Mexico independence of España?
Torrez: No, I don’t think they celebrated much of that. Maybe I was too busy working.
Muñoz: I was just going to say that. Maybe you just weren’t in town. You were working out there somewhere. Okay, what church did you attend-or did you attend church? (no audible response) Our Lady de Guadalupe?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: And the location to that is on Kendrick. Okay. How many churches do you remember at the time in Flagstaff?
Torrez: Well, there was one there on San Francisco Street. I guess there were two others. The one in town, [unclear]. Was it Emerson?
Mrs. Torrez: Elephants [unclear] lions.
Muñoz: Gargoyles.
Mrs. Torrez: Whatever.
Torrez: Across from the Emerson.
Muñoz: Oh yeah, that’s another church.
Torrez: Yeah, [unclear] Catholic church.
Muñoz: As a matter of fact, I think it’s celebrating like its hundredth birthday or something.
Torrez: Yeah. It’s an old one.
Muñoz: How about the cemeteries? We talked about that one at Riordan’s. Across the street from that, verdad?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: Have you been to Flagstaff, do you see where the Kentucky Fried Chicken is? I thought that’s where the cemetery started.
Torrez: Well, it was up there. You used to go in there. You remember when we used to get our driver’s license first? Right there. You go across the way.
Muñoz: Okay. So do you only remember one cemetery?
Torrez: Well, there was two.
Muñoz: Okay, where was the other one?
Torrez: They used to call it.... Remember, it was on San Francisco Street, all the way to the end? [unclear] or whatever they used to call it.
Muñoz: Citizens?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: The Citizens Cemetery. Okay. You know, when you were growing up, at the time how different were the wakes and funerals from what they are [now]?
Torrez: Yeah, a lot of times they used to have 'em at home. We used to have a bonfire out there, burn some rubber or tires or something, or burn wood or something. We used to play out there when somebody had passed away.
Muñoz: Why would you burn all of that?
Torrez: Just playing. Scaring the [unclear] away.
Muñoz: Scaring the who?
Torrez: Good ones.
Muñoz: Good ones? (laughs) Okay. How about rosaries? Do you remember where you attended rosaries? Were they at home, or were they at the church?
Torrez: At the church.
Muñoz: How about mortuaries? How many mortuaries were there in Flag? Or do you remember any?
Torrez: Yeah, there used to be one over there in back of the hospital someplace over there. You know, right now it’s too big, but there used to be one right....
Muñoz: Uh-huh.
Torrez: And then over there in East Flag used to be another one.
Muñoz: How would you describe baptismals or weddings, the traditions? How was that like then when you remember them as a kid-compared to what it is now? You know, now it’s like it’s a bigger wedding or a bigger baptismal, in some cases it may be.
Torrez: I don’t know. I don’t think I like the way they do it now. I think they used to celebrate more a long time ago.
Muñoz: More?
Torrez: Yeah. They used to get together and they cooked their own bread and all that stuff, you know.
Muñoz: The homemade stuff, huh?
Torrez: Yeah. Now you buy everything, you know.
Muñoz: And you say you’d prefer to have your homemade goods. Okay.
Torrez: Sure.
Muñoz: I agree with you. Hey, how about food? Well, we talked about food: it’s gotta be homemade, and it’s gotta be better than ordered food. How about music? What type of music?
Torrez: Oh, I used to like to hear my cousins play the guitar and sing all them songs. My brother used to do it too-Benny.
Muñoz: Benny played guitar?
Torrez: Benny played guitar and sang.
Muñoz: Did Elmo?
Torrez: No.
Muñoz: For New Year’s and Christmas, we used to go out there when it was snowing, and a bunch of us would get together. They used to celebrate birthdays or whatever. But then later on, they wouldn’t even let you do it.
Muñoz: How come? Disturbing the peace?
Torrez: The law said we were making too much noise. Yeah, they stopped us, yeah.
Muñoz: I was going to say, you must have been serenading them.
Torrez: Yeah. That too. [unclear] Dominga and all [unclear] get together. Did you know a girl named.... Now I’m not going to be able to tell you the name, but she was married to Johnny Garcia. No! It was Johnny Garcia’s sister, Gloria Garcia, from the Plaza Vieja.
Muñoz: I have to think, let me see.
Torrez: Remember Johnny Garcia? He’s the one that got killed over there was a truck, over there. They were fixing the road over there, like going to Williams.
Muñoz: Oh yeah. They live up in [unclear].
Torrez: A truck and a bus coming, and they killed him.
Muñoz: Yeah, they got a bunch of daughters named Dorothy and Jenny and them. Yeah.
Torrez: His wife’s name was Rosa Almendarez.
Muñoz: I know it is, yeah. So you were going to tell me about Mr. Garcia.
Torrez: Well, they used to come over here and get together with us, and we’d go over there celebrating.
Muñoz: But tell me about the girl.
Torrez: She used to come over there from Old Town, you know. She was one of 'em that come over there, you know. And there’d be snow over our knees, just go over there singing and playing guitar.
Muñoz: And serenading, huh?
Torrez: When there was a birthday....
Muñoz: What type of music? Mexican music?
Torrez: Las Mañanitas. Yeah, yeah.
Muñoz: Las Mañanitas, okay. What else?
Torrez: You’d have to have a tub full of ice and whiskey and beer-everything, the goodies.
Muñoz: To celebrate, of course! Okay, you said during the Depression your parents were living in New Mexico, right?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: And you said you guys went through a very hard time at that time.
Torrez: Oh yeah.
Muñoz: Can you describe some of that time during Depression?
Torrez: Well, you know, up there they canned everything: they canned meat, they canned everything that you were going to use. I remember in those days we was up there, you didn’t have no electricity, you didn’t have no refrigerators-nothing like that. We had to get some ice. Those people, they’d get out there on the place, they used to plant this.... It was called ya romanco [phonetic], and it’d grow real big like that. They’d water it and everything. And they had some [coals?] built down there, and they put sand in there, plain sand. And they put carrots and they put pumpkins and they put watermelons, and anything like that, and it’d stay in there. You’d go get it whenever you wanted to. And do a lot of jerky because you couldn’t keep meat very long. So when you’d butcher something, it was going to be mostly jerky-or they canned 'em, you know. They can it in jars. And the same thing with carrots, same thing with chile, and all that stuff. They had a room, you know, maybe about like this over there, and they had no windows, and they had one door inside, and they called it a dispensa. It was all shelves, and they’d put all their jars there and everything. Whenever they wanted something, it was like wintertime....
Muñoz: A pantry, okay.
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: I guess I would have to ask you, during Prohibition I bet you heard stories about that-bootlegging time?
Torrez: You know, up there it was pretty quiet about all that. I didn’t know anything about that until I came to Flagstaff.
Muñoz: And then you heard stories about here in Flagstaff?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: Okay, medicina, medicines. Do you remember going to doctors, or doctors coming to you?
Torrez: Well, yeah. See, in 1957, I had a car wreck, me and my brother coming from Phoenix. I was already in bed, and she was sick from.... Sylvia. He was really drunk, so I told her, I might as well get up and go with him. So we wrecked the car over here by Cortez Junction. The car threw me out, broke my neck. He just got a big cut on his head. I had a chance to pull him out of the car, because the car was with the wheels up-the wheels were turning.
Muñoz: Were you going fast?
Torrez: No, I wasn’t really going fast. I was driving, but the car was going that way, I was coming this way, and the headlights, I couldn’t see. So I heard the little rocks hitting. I guess I put the brakes or something, and skidded and just rolled about three times, right in the middle of the highway. So there were some guys coming from Ajo that lived here in Cottonwood, and they brought us here to the hospital in Cottonwood. Like I say, that was another thing, I don’t know, I broke my neck and everything, and I made it through again.
Muñoz: You really have had guardian angels behind you a lot!
Torrez: Yeah. Well, I guess for some reason I’m still here. Seventy-six years old now.
Muñoz: So then you would say you didn’t have doctors coming to the house? No? You went to doctors?
Torrez: Yeah, in Flagstaff we did. Dr. Sechrist. Remember Dr. Sechrist?
Muñoz: Uh-huh, I remember. In New Mexico, nada?
Torrez: We didn’t know doctors over there.
Muñoz: So who took care of your illnesses-your mom?
Torrez: Yeah, they used to use a lot of herbs over there.
Muñoz: Was she a currandera?
Torrez: My grandma was.
Muñoz: What’s her name?
Torrez: Cedilia. She went to school when she was young. I guess she was over a hundred years old when she died. You remember her, don’t you? She used to live in that little house over there at the house where we lived.
Muñoz: Yeah, did she live where Tio used to live?
Torrez: Yeah, yeah.
Muñoz: Okay. Everyone keeps calling him Tuvo [phonetic]. I call him Tio.
Torrez: And the old man, they used to call him Padrino.
Muñoz: So you would take [unclear].
Torrez: All kinds of that stuff.
Muñoz: So she would take care of you young people too?
Torrez: Yeah. I guess she took care of a lot of people there in New Mexico. Like I say, those pictures that she went to school.
Muñoz: For midwife? To become a midwife she went to school? Oh wow. So she brought in a lot of children in New Mexico?
Torrez: I imagine. Of course I left when I was three years old.
Muñoz: Maybe what you heard.
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: And you probably know people that knew her.
Torrez: Oh yeah. There were some other people that were like that, you know. A lot of those people that they go help-empachos ojos. You know what ojos is?
Muñoz: (Spanish)
Mrs. Torrez: (Spanish)
Muñoz: How about, you mentioned you were born in Flagstaff, and you were born at home, and you think it was your grandma that delivered you.
Torrez: Probably, I guess.
Muñoz: So what house were you born at on San Francisco?
Torrez: Well, there was, you know, where El Charro was? And then there was about three houses from there, on the other side of the road, opposite side of the road.
Muñoz: What childhood illnesses did you have when you were growing up, do you remember?
Torrez: I don’t think we.... Probably the chicken pox. Probably something like that, you know. Mumps I guess. Probably throat or something. We was always runnin’ around, you know.
Muñoz: Do you remember any remedies that they used on you when you were sick?
Torrez: Oh yeah.
Muñoz: What remedies, home remedies?
Torrez: Yeah, we used to use some of that oil from the lamps, you know.
Muñoz: For what?
Torrez: Coughing or something. They gave you a little teaspoon and put sugar on it. And they’d get that deal out with that, and put about three drops of that oil. And it’d kill it. And then there used to be stuff we’d pick up over there. It was called chimaja, otra hierba.
Muñoz: Otra hierba? Another weed. (laughs)
Torrez: But the Indians call it wild carrots and wild celery-that’s what they call it, the Indians.
Muñoz: So what did they use it for?
Torrez: Well, you can use it for a lot of things. I think they use some of it to make aspirin out of it. They grind it, it’s a root about that long. Then they grind it and make aspirin out of it.
Muñoz: Any others? How about for a fever? What do you remember for a fever?
Torrez: We used to use [unclear] mexicano, hierba buena, oils.
Muñoz: So your mama knew all of these, or your grandma did, and she gave them to you?
Torrez: Yeah. My mom knew how to use that stuff. In fact sometimes they used that mercury. [unclear] They’d get the head of a pin, you know, get it, and give just one little touch like that. Pffsst! Because it’s heavy, you know-mercury. But now they don’t use it because they say it’s poison.
Muñoz: Wow. Yup. Okay, let me see here, folklore. Tell me about the llorona.
Mrs. Torrez: Oh my gosh!
Muñoz: Tell me about the llorona.
Torrez: Oh, she used to cry all the time.
Muñoz: Yeah, I heard she was by the Rio de Flag. We were waiting for her. What was the story you heard when you were in New Mexico and you were a kid, about the llorona?
Torrez: I don’t know, I guess the people were kind of crazy, I guess, to come up with something like that.
Muñoz: You don’t think it’s real?
Torrez: No.
Muñoz: It’s folklore, huh? Did they use it to scare you?
Torrez: Now if you asked me about a witch, well, I know there were witches.
Muñoz: Okay, tell me about a witch.
Torrez: Well, you know, they used to go over there....
Muñoz: Brujas [phonetic].
Torrez: Yeah. If they didn’t like you, or they don’t like a person, they do a little something with an apple, put something in it for you, so you’d get sick.
Muñoz: (Spanish)
Mrs. Torrez: She was the one that had to do it.
Torrez: Yeah, there were people that knew how to do it.
Muñoz: Were those people here in Flagstaff, or were they in New Mexico?
Torrez: I don’t think there was much in Flagstaff. There was other places where they were. They were bad, you know. Like over in her town, they were bad.
Muñoz: Williams?! Hay muchas brujas in Williams?
Mrs. Torrez: There was one that I know of, and it scared the heck out of [me].
Muñoz: Bobbie, tell me about the bruja in Williams.
Mrs. Torrez: One day my sister was walking across the street, and I hit her, because a car almost ran over her. And this old lady says,"You’d better watch it, or you’ll see what’s gonna happen to you." I said,"Oh shut up, you don’t know nothing," I told her. "She’s my sister and I can do whatever I want to." And she said,"Ora veras?" (more Spanish) The light came and we had to pull her up. And I went over there to pull it, and here comes this lady, or whatever the heck it was, coming like that to [unclear]. Fire in her fingernails, long fingernails. I started screaming. My back was all scratched. And then there was an owl outside, like laughing.
Muñoz: Really?! You knew this lady, you knew who she was, and she lived in Williams for a long time?
Torrez: Yeah, [unclear].
Muñoz: So did she have that reputation that she was a bruja?
Mrs. Torrez: Yeah, because there’s these people that lived right in back of us, and she was in love with this woman’s husband, and she kept bothering and bothering, so he got the shotgun and shot her. And the next day, they found her by the door with a bullet on her leg. When she died, she had a trunk with hair and little dolls and everything-needles and everything. She was [unclear].
Muñoz: Was she a woman without any family, or did she have family?
Mrs. Torrez: She didn’t have family. One day she came to visit my friend’s house, and we wanted to see if it was true that she was a witch. So we put two pins across like that, inside. And then she said,"Well, I guess I’d better go," and she looked at it and she wouldn’t go. We had put one in the back too. So she wouldn’t go out until we took 'em off. We got scared and took 'em off. And man, she took off and she never came back.
Muñoz: Oh my goodness!
Mrs. Torrez: So our house, we put one outside.
(refreshments offered)
Muñoz: Oh, so you had those in Williams, huh?
Mrs. Torrez: Just that one that I know of.
Muñoz: Americana?
Mrs. Torrez: Yeah. Of course!
Muñoz: Did you ever hear that she put a curse on someone?
Torrez: Yeah, this lady, she kept getting big. They thought she was pregnant. She did something to her, I don’t know what, that her stomach kept growing and growing. She said the only way she can get well is she has to run after a pig, and she’ll get okay. How in the heck was she gonna run after a pig?!-big that way she was.
Torrez: Do you remember when I had my broken neck? I had a cast from here.
Muñoz: Yeah. I’m gonna focus now, I’m gonna ask you questions about when you worked at.... You did mention about different contractors, laborers, Teamsters, but I’m going to focus on Page, when you went. What year did you say that was that you were employed in Page?
Torrez: Oh, to work over there? 1958, I think.
Muñoz: Okay, in 1958 you worked in Page, and that was with the union?
Torrez: Yeah, through the union.
Muñoz: Did they have a number?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: What number was that?
Torrez: 383.
Muñoz: You can remember that! 383. And who was the contractor or subcontractor?
Torrez: Merritt-Chapman & Scott.
Muñoz: So you had been in construction for such a long time-how did you get that job? Was it assigned to you? How did that work?
Torrez: Well, they ask for people from the union. And if you want to go on a certain job, well, you go. You don’t if you don’t think you’ll like it. So I went up there and they sent me up there, you know. We had to stay in the barracks because there was nothing there at that time. The town wasn’t laid out yet or nothin’. They had like a....
Muñoz: When you say barracks, is it like military?
Torrez: Yeah, they had a row, like a building like that long one. And then a room maybe that three could stay in a room. And then they had a kitchen over there and we could go eat breakfast, dinner, and supper. They’d pack our lunch too there.
Muñoz: So they would feed you while you were there working?
Torrez: Yeah. Well, we’d take our lunch. We’d have breakfast there at the kitchen, and then they fixed up a lunch, a little bag, and we’d go to work. And then when we got off of work, we went up there to the kitchen, we had our supper. But see, all my time that I was up there I worked the swing shift.
Muñoz: Meaning what time to what time?
Torrez: From 4:30 ’til 11:30.
Muñoz: Four thirty in the morning?
Torrez: No, at night, in the evening.
Muñoz: Okay, 4:30 p.m. to 11. And what exactly did you do?
Torrez: Well, we was working down, cleaning where the dam was going to be. We cleaned all that dirt, and we had to make what they called a [coffer]dam, and we put all that dirt up there, and that made a cofferdam. All that dirt we took up there, we made a dam over there so it’d hold the water. And right here where we was cleaning at the same time, that’s where the cement dam went up.
Muñoz: Oh, okay. So what did you do, were you a heavy equipment operator?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: What did you drive?
Torrez: We drove ukes-Euclids-it’s a big truck, you know.
Muñoz: You’ll have to give me the terminology, Martin!
Torrez: It’s a big truck, and it’s got big ol’ wheels, maybe about as high as from here to that....
Muñoz: Yeah, I’ve seen some pictures.
Torrez: And we had trailers, and they had what they called a gooseneck-hookup with a gooseneck. This trailer had a deal that’d go up like that, and down like that, and then hook up on this tractor. It looked like a tractor when you take it off. So you call it a gooseneck. And it was high enough that that wheel could come-you could come around it like that, see. It was pretty big. They loaded up with different kinds of equipment. They had what they call a belly dump. When you dump, these gates are open like that. Instead of dumping like a dump truck, these were belly dumps.
Muñoz: Oh, at the bottom.
Torrez: Yeah. So they opened like this.
Muñoz: And you would drop it down. Okay.
Torrez: And we had these other trucks, what they called end dumps. Those were Euclids too. So they had a regular bed that’d lift up like that and dump like that, through the back.
Muñoz: How many feet down were you working at?
Torrez: Down there in the bottom? Seven hundred and some feet.
Muñoz: How did they get those trucks down there?
Torrez: Well, they first got 'em in there with-they built up a big crane. The first ones that went up there, this crane would run like this, back and forth across the canyon. And they could get [unclear] and they’d hook 'em up and they’d go like that. And when they got down there, they’d just gotten down in there. But later on, because they had to put a tunnel in through there, through the side of the canyon. They made a tunnel in through there. They took a long time, but that’s the way they got the equipment, you know, through those cranes that they had. They had big cranes they could....
Muñoz: Did you ever take pictures of that?
Torrez: I had some, but I don’t know where....
Muñoz: You’ve got a little history there, don’t you think?
Torrez: Oh yeah.
Muñoz: Yeah, definitely.
Torrez: Yeah, we had to go up there with those trucks. We had to go up like that, and up and up and up. They had like what you call where the smoke comes out and all that, and they was up, up, like in the motor, you know. The little thing would get red hot, cherry hot, when we was goin’ up. And they had to push us, they had to get a blade in back of us because we was haulin’ that stuff with water, and the road would get-the truck would start spinnin’. And if they didn’t push us, we could roll off, into the dam. So they had to push us.
Muñoz: That was pretty dangerous, huh?
Torrez: A lot of people died there.
Muñoz: Yeah, I was gonna.... That’s a question I have to ask you later.
Torrez: We finished there, doing that. We cleaned all that, and then they took us up there, there’s a place that they call Wahweap. That’s where Utah and Arizona, that’s the line, you know. We went and worked pulling that dirt in there because for the dam they didn’t want no broken rocks. It had to be rock that we got from the river, different sizes up to eight inches around, that they put in there with the cement.
Muñoz: To build the wall, the dam?
Torrez: To build the dam. See, that thing was about, oh, a lot wider than this, maybe about three, four times wider, like that. A lot of cement went in there. We hauled stuff from over there, from the river, because there were two rivers. One goes like that this way, and the other one goes like this. So we was pullin’ the dirt out of this one because the other one had water. In the wintertime we’d work twelve hours, seven days, because they didn’t want to shut it down because it was so cold it’d freeze the conveyors. Because when we dumped, it had to go almost over half a mile up on the conveyors like that, to another place, there where they separated the sand and the rock. That was our job down there.
Muñoz: What did they call that job?
Torrez: Well, we just hauled the sand and separated, because it had like a big deal where we’d dump, and it was deep in there. So anyway, some of it would separate there, because they had different deals-sand, different rocks-and then it’d go up there. They had a guy that put the light on is. Like green would be you can go in there and dump. If you had a red light, you couldn’t leave and get up on top, because something would happen [unclear]. And it happened to me. I came in there, we used to like to shoot dice right after lunch at a shop over there about halfway down to the job. We was haulin’ ten miles, see. And we’d stop there and play dice. So I went up there, I got up there almost lunchtime, and the guy had the green light on me. I dumped it and turned around and went back as fast as I could, so I could get in a game. So when I got over there, everybody was like they were in church.
Muñoz: Quiet, huh?
Torrez: Yeah, real quiet, and looking at me like I’d done something wrong. Well, it happened that this guy wasn’t supposed to be down there in the bottom, and he got covered up with a bunch of dirt-maybe about ten tons or something, the one that I dumped-some of it, anyway. His name was Martin. So I heard the radios talking about"Martin, Martin; Martin, Martin; Martin, Martin." Martin [unclear] (phone rings).
Muñoz: So did the guy make it?
Torrez: No way.
Muñoz: Not with ten tons of dirt, huh? Oh my goodness.
Torrez: They told me what happened, that I was legal to dump it.
Muñoz: But you wouldn’t have known-the light was green.
Torrez: The light was green for me.
Muñoz: And what was he doing down there?
Torrez: Well, he was a laborer. He was supposed to help clean it up during lunch hour. And what happened, see, my load went through, and part of it [unclear], because those things were like this, see. And there were three parts to it, you know. And it hangs up there, wet and everything, you know. It hangs up there, and what they do is when they get ready to work, they’ve got a vibrator that hits the thing like that, see. (hits one fist into his other open palm) So he didn’t wait for that. He got in there. I don’t know what the deal was. Maybe it was his time to go. But that’s what happened [unclear] vibrator.
Muñoz: You were talking about how some of these people that were from Flagstaff that drove up to Page got in car accidents on weekends, for various reasons. Seven days a week, that’s a lot of hours! And seven days a week! Wow. Okay.
Torrez: What it was, see, the rest of the days they had three shifts: They had the day shift, swing shift, and graveyard. But they took that shift off because they couldn’t afford to let that freeze, you know. They’d just get a little time to put [grease?] on it, on those conveyors and everything. That’s why they run just two shifts.
Muñoz: Oh, they only had two shifts going.
Torrez: In the wintertime.
Muñoz: And in the summertime they had three shifts. Oh wow. Okay. Would you say they paid you pretty good for doing what you did?
Torrez: Oh yeah.
Muñoz: And you worked twelve hours a day?
Torrez: In the winter, but during the regular shift, it’d be eight.
Muñoz: Twelve hours in the winter, and regular hours, eight, in the summer. And you said you were living in Page at the time. Describe Page to me at that time. What did it look like when you were working there?
Torrez: (chuckles) Well, when we was working down there, we were working right inside the canyon. You didn’t get out. You went down there in the morning, you didn’t get out until your shift was out. And you had to come out in those cages, see. That was about it. When we was over there on the other side, we had our trucks, and we’d drive our cars up there to the shop. Then from there we’d get our trucks.
Muñoz: Where was the shop located?
Torrez: It was up there close to Wahweap.
Muñoz: Then Wahweap, you have to come around and get to where the city ends?
Torrez: Well, no, there was a place up there we’d get to the highway-you know, the one that goes to Utah. And we’d get out and come around, because the bridge was already done, so we could come up, down the highway, and into Page with our cars.
Muñoz: You started to say something about trailers. Was there a lot of trailers?
Torrez: Yeah, and then they started puttin’ trailers in there. I came over to Flag and I found one of them repossessed, and I bought a trailer [unclear] up there.
Muñoz: Did they start going to school there?
Torrez: Yeah, [unclear]. Sylvia was too small yet.
Mrs. Torrez: [unclear] first grade.
Torrez: Oh, was it?
Muñoz: Your coworkers and the people working, was it a diversity of people? Were there blacks, whites, Españoles?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: So what was the highest labor worker, an Americano or Native American-did you say that?
Torrez: What it was, see, like for example, they got ironworkers-they pay 'em more than a truck driver, they pay more than a laborer. And then they got the electricians. They got bigger pay. And [unclear] they pay more.
Muñoz: What was the last one that you said that got paid more?
Torrez: Electricians and ironworkers and probably the bosses.
Muñoz: Alright.
Torrez: Mechanics.
Muñoz: So what did you guys do after work? Did you find entertainment over there to keep you guys busy from your work-or were you so tired...?
Torrez: Well, when we got off from work, we went home and went to bed, because it was already almost twelve. By the time we went to bed, it was after midnight.
Muñoz: Right. So you kind of slept the whole rest of the day?
Torrez: No, [unclear]. Well, there was maybe guys that wanted to be over there in the bar. That was different.
Muñoz: They had a bar in Page?
Torrez: Oh yeah. That bar caused a lot of people to get hurt and get killed and everything.
Muñoz: Really? You mean labor workers?
Torrez: You remember the story about the Padillas? Frank Padilla.
Muñoz: No, I don’t remember any story.
Torrez: Got killed over there.
Muñoz: In Page? I don’t remember hearing.
Torrez: A guy from Williams killed him over there. They were fighting over a girl.
Muñoz: Those girls! They just cause all kinds of trouble.
Torrez: Girls caused a lot of trouble over there.
Muñoz: Were there women living in Page?
Torrez: Oh yeah, all kinds of people-little ones, big ones. They got over there to [unclear] and Frank got killed, and then the brothers got into there. One of 'em got shot-lost fingers and stuff like that.
Muñoz: And lost fingers?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: Mexicanos against Mexicanos? Is that what you’re saying?
Torrez: Yeah. The guy that killed Frank, his name was Manuel Cortez. Frank Padilla used to own a service station over there. Remember over there on the main highway, where the depot was?
Muñoz: On 66, uh-huh.
Torrez: Yeah. Remember, there was a little trailer there they called....
Muñoz: Snack Shack?
Torrez: Yeah. And then there was a service station there. Frank kept that station for a long, long time.
Muñoz: And they killed him.
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: What year was that?
Torrez: I’d say in ’59, almost ’60. Maybe in the sixties.
Muñoz: Would that be the only killing done over there?
Torrez: Oh no, there was always fighting-Indians fighting and everything.
Muñoz: Okay, so I asked you about diverse groups of people, like Mexicans, blacks, Native Americans, Spanish people. Did you guys get along, or were they always fighting against each other?
Torrez: Normal thing, I guess. But there was people there, I don’t know.... See, where I was, we were kind of away from a lot of people, because over there where I was, all we had to do is haul dirt, and that was it. The other ones that were working there was the guys that loaded us.
Muñoz: So you guys were divided? I mean, there was a barracks for.... No?
Torrez: No, we just had the trucks, and we’d get in there, and they’d load us, come back and dump, and go back.
Muñoz: Wow, I didn’t know Page was such a booming thing, all kinds of stuff happened.
Torrez: Oh, there was all kinds of things going on. A lot of work.
Muñoz: There was a question I’ve been thinking of. We talked about you worked as a laborer. You retired with thirty-two years of truck driving, right?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: So when you were growing up, we talked about you working at the slaughterhouse. Is that the only job you held when you were young, or did you hold other jobs when you were young?
Torrez: Well, I worked for Northern Arizona Gas after that, and after the slaughterhouse, you know. And then I drove the lady, like a chauffeur, for Mrs. Riordan.
Muñoz: Oh, you were a chauffeur for Mrs. Riordan. Okay.
Torrez: Yeah, on Sunday I had to take her to church and everything. Washed windows over there at the old house, that big house. Sometimes they’d put me to pull dandelions out of the grass. All that, you know, little jobs. And Northern Arizona Gas was their property anyway. See, I used to have to deliver tanks, like twenty-two-gallon bottles-tanks, you know-and I had to deliver 'em in the winter and summer because the natural gas wasn’t there yet, so I had to deliver them tanks. The winter, they’d call me, I’d go over there to the house and have those tanks in the pickup, ready. I’d go to [unclear] and be over there, and there’d be a storm, wind would be blowin’ the snow. I’d have to go out there and put some tanks around. Run out of gas.
Muñoz: Alright. I think I’ve concluded my oral history, [More-eye?]. I guess I could sit here and listen to you all day. So I want to thank you very much for sharing.
Torrez: I used to go out to some places, you know, over there in Walnut Canyon. Go over there and ride horses with a guy over there, and then come over here. Me and Mike used to come over here to Bill Graves’. He had a ranch over there by Parker, Parks, back over in there. And he had cattle over there and everything.
Muñoz: Oh. Bill Graves. Let me see, I think I have....
Torrez: The church is over there. That road’s named Bill Graves. Right there, that church over there, Catholic church.
Muñoz: Floyd Deming. Did you know Floyd Deming?
Torrez: I don’t think so.
Muñoz: Okay. Alright, I’m gonna....

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NAU.OH.97.68.37B
161253
Martin Torrez (Part 2)
Interviewed by Delia Ceballos Muñoz
June 15, 2006
Torrez: Birthday. New Year’s. Christmas.
Muñoz: Were any of those celebrations celebrated-in Flagstaff did they have a Christmas parade? Or did they have a celebration for the community, do you remember? You know, like Cinco de Mayo. Did they ever celebrate Cinco de Mayo in Flagstaff, do you remember?
Torrez: I don’t think so.
Muñoz: How about did they celebrate the independence of-September the ninth? September sixteenth, Mexico independence of España?
Torrez: No, I don’t think they celebrated much of that. Maybe I was too busy working.
Muñoz: I was just going to say that. Maybe you just weren’t in town. You were working out there somewhere. Okay, what church did you attend-or did you attend church? (no audible response) Our Lady de Guadalupe?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: And the location to that is on Kendrick. Okay. How many churches do you remember at the time in Flagstaff?
Torrez: Well, there was one there on San Francisco Street. I guess there were two others. The one in town, [unclear]. Was it Emerson?
Mrs. Torrez: Elephants [unclear] lions.
Muñoz: Gargoyles.
Mrs. Torrez: Whatever.
Torrez: Across from the Emerson.
Muñoz: Oh yeah, that’s another church.
Torrez: Yeah, [unclear] Catholic church.
Muñoz: As a matter of fact, I think it’s celebrating like its hundredth birthday or something.
Torrez: Yeah. It’s an old one.
Muñoz: How about the cemeteries? We talked about that one at Riordan’s. Across the street from that, verdad?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: Have you been to Flagstaff, do you see where the Kentucky Fried Chicken is? I thought that’s where the cemetery started.
Torrez: Well, it was up there. You used to go in there. You remember when we used to get our driver’s license first? Right there. You go across the way.
Muñoz: Okay. So do you only remember one cemetery?
Torrez: Well, there was two.
Muñoz: Okay, where was the other one?
Torrez: They used to call it.... Remember, it was on San Francisco Street, all the way to the end? [unclear] or whatever they used to call it.
Muñoz: Citizens?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: The Citizens Cemetery. Okay. You know, when you were growing up, at the time how different were the wakes and funerals from what they are [now]?
Torrez: Yeah, a lot of times they used to have 'em at home. We used to have a bonfire out there, burn some rubber or tires or something, or burn wood or something. We used to play out there when somebody had passed away.
Muñoz: Why would you burn all of that?
Torrez: Just playing. Scaring the [unclear] away.
Muñoz: Scaring the who?
Torrez: Good ones.
Muñoz: Good ones? (laughs) Okay. How about rosaries? Do you remember where you attended rosaries? Were they at home, or were they at the church?
Torrez: At the church.
Muñoz: How about mortuaries? How many mortuaries were there in Flag? Or do you remember any?
Torrez: Yeah, there used to be one over there in back of the hospital someplace over there. You know, right now it’s too big, but there used to be one right....
Muñoz: Uh-huh.
Torrez: And then over there in East Flag used to be another one.
Muñoz: How would you describe baptismals or weddings, the traditions? How was that like then when you remember them as a kid-compared to what it is now? You know, now it’s like it’s a bigger wedding or a bigger baptismal, in some cases it may be.
Torrez: I don’t know. I don’t think I like the way they do it now. I think they used to celebrate more a long time ago.
Muñoz: More?
Torrez: Yeah. They used to get together and they cooked their own bread and all that stuff, you know.
Muñoz: The homemade stuff, huh?
Torrez: Yeah. Now you buy everything, you know.
Muñoz: And you say you’d prefer to have your homemade goods. Okay.
Torrez: Sure.
Muñoz: I agree with you. Hey, how about food? Well, we talked about food: it’s gotta be homemade, and it’s gotta be better than ordered food. How about music? What type of music?
Torrez: Oh, I used to like to hear my cousins play the guitar and sing all them songs. My brother used to do it too-Benny.
Muñoz: Benny played guitar?
Torrez: Benny played guitar and sang.
Muñoz: Did Elmo?
Torrez: No.
Muñoz: For New Year’s and Christmas, we used to go out there when it was snowing, and a bunch of us would get together. They used to celebrate birthdays or whatever. But then later on, they wouldn’t even let you do it.
Muñoz: How come? Disturbing the peace?
Torrez: The law said we were making too much noise. Yeah, they stopped us, yeah.
Muñoz: I was going to say, you must have been serenading them.
Torrez: Yeah. That too. [unclear] Dominga and all [unclear] get together. Did you know a girl named.... Now I’m not going to be able to tell you the name, but she was married to Johnny Garcia. No! It was Johnny Garcia’s sister, Gloria Garcia, from the Plaza Vieja.
Muñoz: I have to think, let me see.
Torrez: Remember Johnny Garcia? He’s the one that got killed over there was a truck, over there. They were fixing the road over there, like going to Williams.
Muñoz: Oh yeah. They live up in [unclear].
Torrez: A truck and a bus coming, and they killed him.
Muñoz: Yeah, they got a bunch of daughters named Dorothy and Jenny and them. Yeah.
Torrez: His wife’s name was Rosa Almendarez.
Muñoz: I know it is, yeah. So you were going to tell me about Mr. Garcia.
Torrez: Well, they used to come over here and get together with us, and we’d go over there celebrating.
Muñoz: But tell me about the girl.
Torrez: She used to come over there from Old Town, you know. She was one of 'em that come over there, you know. And there’d be snow over our knees, just go over there singing and playing guitar.
Muñoz: And serenading, huh?
Torrez: When there was a birthday....
Muñoz: What type of music? Mexican music?
Torrez: Las Mañanitas. Yeah, yeah.
Muñoz: Las Mañanitas, okay. What else?
Torrez: You’d have to have a tub full of ice and whiskey and beer-everything, the goodies.
Muñoz: To celebrate, of course! Okay, you said during the Depression your parents were living in New Mexico, right?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: And you said you guys went through a very hard time at that time.
Torrez: Oh yeah.
Muñoz: Can you describe some of that time during Depression?
Torrez: Well, you know, up there they canned everything: they canned meat, they canned everything that you were going to use. I remember in those days we was up there, you didn’t have no electricity, you didn’t have no refrigerators-nothing like that. We had to get some ice. Those people, they’d get out there on the place, they used to plant this.... It was called ya romanco [phonetic], and it’d grow real big like that. They’d water it and everything. And they had some [coals?] built down there, and they put sand in there, plain sand. And they put carrots and they put pumpkins and they put watermelons, and anything like that, and it’d stay in there. You’d go get it whenever you wanted to. And do a lot of jerky because you couldn’t keep meat very long. So when you’d butcher something, it was going to be mostly jerky-or they canned 'em, you know. They can it in jars. And the same thing with carrots, same thing with chile, and all that stuff. They had a room, you know, maybe about like this over there, and they had no windows, and they had one door inside, and they called it a dispensa. It was all shelves, and they’d put all their jars there and everything. Whenever they wanted something, it was like wintertime....
Muñoz: A pantry, okay.
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: I guess I would have to ask you, during Prohibition I bet you heard stories about that-bootlegging time?
Torrez: You know, up there it was pretty quiet about all that. I didn’t know anything about that until I came to Flagstaff.
Muñoz: And then you heard stories about here in Flagstaff?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: Okay, medicina, medicines. Do you remember going to doctors, or doctors coming to you?
Torrez: Well, yeah. See, in 1957, I had a car wreck, me and my brother coming from Phoenix. I was already in bed, and she was sick from.... Sylvia. He was really drunk, so I told her, I might as well get up and go with him. So we wrecked the car over here by Cortez Junction. The car threw me out, broke my neck. He just got a big cut on his head. I had a chance to pull him out of the car, because the car was with the wheels up-the wheels were turning.
Muñoz: Were you going fast?
Torrez: No, I wasn’t really going fast. I was driving, but the car was going that way, I was coming this way, and the headlights, I couldn’t see. So I heard the little rocks hitting. I guess I put the brakes or something, and skidded and just rolled about three times, right in the middle of the highway. So there were some guys coming from Ajo that lived here in Cottonwood, and they brought us here to the hospital in Cottonwood. Like I say, that was another thing, I don’t know, I broke my neck and everything, and I made it through again.
Muñoz: You really have had guardian angels behind you a lot!
Torrez: Yeah. Well, I guess for some reason I’m still here. Seventy-six years old now.
Muñoz: So then you would say you didn’t have doctors coming to the house? No? You went to doctors?
Torrez: Yeah, in Flagstaff we did. Dr. Sechrist. Remember Dr. Sechrist?
Muñoz: Uh-huh, I remember. In New Mexico, nada?
Torrez: We didn’t know doctors over there.
Muñoz: So who took care of your illnesses-your mom?
Torrez: Yeah, they used to use a lot of herbs over there.
Muñoz: Was she a currandera?
Torrez: My grandma was.
Muñoz: What’s her name?
Torrez: Cedilia. She went to school when she was young. I guess she was over a hundred years old when she died. You remember her, don’t you? She used to live in that little house over there at the house where we lived.
Muñoz: Yeah, did she live where Tio used to live?
Torrez: Yeah, yeah.
Muñoz: Okay. Everyone keeps calling him Tuvo [phonetic]. I call him Tio.
Torrez: And the old man, they used to call him Padrino.
Muñoz: So you would take [unclear].
Torrez: All kinds of that stuff.
Muñoz: So she would take care of you young people too?
Torrez: Yeah. I guess she took care of a lot of people there in New Mexico. Like I say, those pictures that she went to school.
Muñoz: For midwife? To become a midwife she went to school? Oh wow. So she brought in a lot of children in New Mexico?
Torrez: I imagine. Of course I left when I was three years old.
Muñoz: Maybe what you heard.
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: And you probably know people that knew her.
Torrez: Oh yeah. There were some other people that were like that, you know. A lot of those people that they go help-empachos ojos. You know what ojos is?
Muñoz: (Spanish)
Mrs. Torrez: (Spanish)
Muñoz: How about, you mentioned you were born in Flagstaff, and you were born at home, and you think it was your grandma that delivered you.
Torrez: Probably, I guess.
Muñoz: So what house were you born at on San Francisco?
Torrez: Well, there was, you know, where El Charro was? And then there was about three houses from there, on the other side of the road, opposite side of the road.
Muñoz: What childhood illnesses did you have when you were growing up, do you remember?
Torrez: I don’t think we.... Probably the chicken pox. Probably something like that, you know. Mumps I guess. Probably throat or something. We was always runnin’ around, you know.
Muñoz: Do you remember any remedies that they used on you when you were sick?
Torrez: Oh yeah.
Muñoz: What remedies, home remedies?
Torrez: Yeah, we used to use some of that oil from the lamps, you know.
Muñoz: For what?
Torrez: Coughing or something. They gave you a little teaspoon and put sugar on it. And they’d get that deal out with that, and put about three drops of that oil. And it’d kill it. And then there used to be stuff we’d pick up over there. It was called chimaja, otra hierba.
Muñoz: Otra hierba? Another weed. (laughs)
Torrez: But the Indians call it wild carrots and wild celery-that’s what they call it, the Indians.
Muñoz: So what did they use it for?
Torrez: Well, you can use it for a lot of things. I think they use some of it to make aspirin out of it. They grind it, it’s a root about that long. Then they grind it and make aspirin out of it.
Muñoz: Any others? How about for a fever? What do you remember for a fever?
Torrez: We used to use [unclear] mexicano, hierba buena, oils.
Muñoz: So your mama knew all of these, or your grandma did, and she gave them to you?
Torrez: Yeah. My mom knew how to use that stuff. In fact sometimes they used that mercury. [unclear] They’d get the head of a pin, you know, get it, and give just one little touch like that. Pffsst! Because it’s heavy, you know-mercury. But now they don’t use it because they say it’s poison.
Muñoz: Wow. Yup. Okay, let me see here, folklore. Tell me about the llorona.
Mrs. Torrez: Oh my gosh!
Muñoz: Tell me about the llorona.
Torrez: Oh, she used to cry all the time.
Muñoz: Yeah, I heard she was by the Rio de Flag. We were waiting for her. What was the story you heard when you were in New Mexico and you were a kid, about the llorona?
Torrez: I don’t know, I guess the people were kind of crazy, I guess, to come up with something like that.
Muñoz: You don’t think it’s real?
Torrez: No.
Muñoz: It’s folklore, huh? Did they use it to scare you?
Torrez: Now if you asked me about a witch, well, I know there were witches.
Muñoz: Okay, tell me about a witch.
Torrez: Well, you know, they used to go over there....
Muñoz: Brujas [phonetic].
Torrez: Yeah. If they didn’t like you, or they don’t like a person, they do a little something with an apple, put something in it for you, so you’d get sick.
Muñoz: (Spanish)
Mrs. Torrez: She was the one that had to do it.
Torrez: Yeah, there were people that knew how to do it.
Muñoz: Were those people here in Flagstaff, or were they in New Mexico?
Torrez: I don’t think there was much in Flagstaff. There was other places where they were. They were bad, you know. Like over in her town, they were bad.
Muñoz: Williams?! Hay muchas brujas in Williams?
Mrs. Torrez: There was one that I know of, and it scared the heck out of [me].
Muñoz: Bobbie, tell me about the bruja in Williams.
Mrs. Torrez: One day my sister was walking across the street, and I hit her, because a car almost ran over her. And this old lady says,"You’d better watch it, or you’ll see what’s gonna happen to you." I said,"Oh shut up, you don’t know nothing," I told her. "She’s my sister and I can do whatever I want to." And she said,"Ora veras?" (more Spanish) The light came and we had to pull her up. And I went over there to pull it, and here comes this lady, or whatever the heck it was, coming like that to [unclear]. Fire in her fingernails, long fingernails. I started screaming. My back was all scratched. And then there was an owl outside, like laughing.
Muñoz: Really?! You knew this lady, you knew who she was, and she lived in Williams for a long time?
Torrez: Yeah, [unclear].
Muñoz: So did she have that reputation that she was a bruja?
Mrs. Torrez: Yeah, because there’s these people that lived right in back of us, and she was in love with this woman’s husband, and she kept bothering and bothering, so he got the shotgun and shot her. And the next day, they found her by the door with a bullet on her leg. When she died, she had a trunk with hair and little dolls and everything-needles and everything. She was [unclear].
Muñoz: Was she a woman without any family, or did she have family?
Mrs. Torrez: She didn’t have family. One day she came to visit my friend’s house, and we wanted to see if it was true that she was a witch. So we put two pins across like that, inside. And then she said,"Well, I guess I’d better go," and she looked at it and she wouldn’t go. We had put one in the back too. So she wouldn’t go out until we took 'em off. We got scared and took 'em off. And man, she took off and she never came back.
Muñoz: Oh my goodness!
Mrs. Torrez: So our house, we put one outside.
(refreshments offered)
Muñoz: Oh, so you had those in Williams, huh?
Mrs. Torrez: Just that one that I know of.
Muñoz: Americana?
Mrs. Torrez: Yeah. Of course!
Muñoz: Did you ever hear that she put a curse on someone?
Torrez: Yeah, this lady, she kept getting big. They thought she was pregnant. She did something to her, I don’t know what, that her stomach kept growing and growing. She said the only way she can get well is she has to run after a pig, and she’ll get okay. How in the heck was she gonna run after a pig?!-big that way she was.
Torrez: Do you remember when I had my broken neck? I had a cast from here.
Muñoz: Yeah. I’m gonna focus now, I’m gonna ask you questions about when you worked at.... You did mention about different contractors, laborers, Teamsters, but I’m going to focus on Page, when you went. What year did you say that was that you were employed in Page?
Torrez: Oh, to work over there? 1958, I think.
Muñoz: Okay, in 1958 you worked in Page, and that was with the union?
Torrez: Yeah, through the union.
Muñoz: Did they have a number?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: What number was that?
Torrez: 383.
Muñoz: You can remember that! 383. And who was the contractor or subcontractor?
Torrez: Merritt-Chapman & Scott.
Muñoz: So you had been in construction for such a long time-how did you get that job? Was it assigned to you? How did that work?
Torrez: Well, they ask for people from the union. And if you want to go on a certain job, well, you go. You don’t if you don’t think you’ll like it. So I went up there and they sent me up there, you know. We had to stay in the barracks because there was nothing there at that time. The town wasn’t laid out yet or nothin’. They had like a....
Muñoz: When you say barracks, is it like military?
Torrez: Yeah, they had a row, like a building like that long one. And then a room maybe that three could stay in a room. And then they had a kitchen over there and we could go eat breakfast, dinner, and supper. They’d pack our lunch too there.
Muñoz: So they would feed you while you were there working?
Torrez: Yeah. Well, we’d take our lunch. We’d have breakfast there at the kitchen, and then they fixed up a lunch, a little bag, and we’d go to work. And then when we got off of work, we went up there to the kitchen, we had our supper. But see, all my time that I was up there I worked the swing shift.
Muñoz: Meaning what time to what time?
Torrez: From 4:30 ’til 11:30.
Muñoz: Four thirty in the morning?
Torrez: No, at night, in the evening.
Muñoz: Okay, 4:30 p.m. to 11. And what exactly did you do?
Torrez: Well, we was working down, cleaning where the dam was going to be. We cleaned all that dirt, and we had to make what they called a [coffer]dam, and we put all that dirt up there, and that made a cofferdam. All that dirt we took up there, we made a dam over there so it’d hold the water. And right here where we was cleaning at the same time, that’s where the cement dam went up.
Muñoz: Oh, okay. So what did you do, were you a heavy equipment operator?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: What did you drive?
Torrez: We drove ukes-Euclids-it’s a big truck, you know.
Muñoz: You’ll have to give me the terminology, Martin!
Torrez: It’s a big truck, and it’s got big ol’ wheels, maybe about as high as from here to that....
Muñoz: Yeah, I’ve seen some pictures.
Torrez: And we had trailers, and they had what they called a gooseneck-hookup with a gooseneck. This trailer had a deal that’d go up like that, and down like that, and then hook up on this tractor. It looked like a tractor when you take it off. So you call it a gooseneck. And it was high enough that that wheel could come-you could come around it like that, see. It was pretty big. They loaded up with different kinds of equipment. They had what they call a belly dump. When you dump, these gates are open like that. Instead of dumping like a dump truck, these were belly dumps.
Muñoz: Oh, at the bottom.
Torrez: Yeah. So they opened like this.
Muñoz: And you would drop it down. Okay.
Torrez: And we had these other trucks, what they called end dumps. Those were Euclids too. So they had a regular bed that’d lift up like that and dump like that, through the back.
Muñoz: How many feet down were you working at?
Torrez: Down there in the bottom? Seven hundred and some feet.
Muñoz: How did they get those trucks down there?
Torrez: Well, they first got 'em in there with-they built up a big crane. The first ones that went up there, this crane would run like this, back and forth across the canyon. And they could get [unclear] and they’d hook 'em up and they’d go like that. And when they got down there, they’d just gotten down in there. But later on, because they had to put a tunnel in through there, through the side of the canyon. They made a tunnel in through there. They took a long time, but that’s the way they got the equipment, you know, through those cranes that they had. They had big cranes they could....
Muñoz: Did you ever take pictures of that?
Torrez: I had some, but I don’t know where....
Muñoz: You’ve got a little history there, don’t you think?
Torrez: Oh yeah.
Muñoz: Yeah, definitely.
Torrez: Yeah, we had to go up there with those trucks. We had to go up like that, and up and up and up. They had like what you call where the smoke comes out and all that, and they was up, up, like in the motor, you know. The little thing would get red hot, cherry hot, when we was goin’ up. And they had to push us, they had to get a blade in back of us because we was haulin’ that stuff with water, and the road would get-the truck would start spinnin’. And if they didn’t push us, we could roll off, into the dam. So they had to push us.
Muñoz: That was pretty dangerous, huh?
Torrez: A lot of people died there.
Muñoz: Yeah, I was gonna.... That’s a question I have to ask you later.
Torrez: We finished there, doing that. We cleaned all that, and then they took us up there, there’s a place that they call Wahweap. That’s where Utah and Arizona, that’s the line, you know. We went and worked pulling that dirt in there because for the dam they didn’t want no broken rocks. It had to be rock that we got from the river, different sizes up to eight inches around, that they put in there with the cement.
Muñoz: To build the wall, the dam?
Torrez: To build the dam. See, that thing was about, oh, a lot wider than this, maybe about three, four times wider, like that. A lot of cement went in there. We hauled stuff from over there, from the river, because there were two rivers. One goes like that this way, and the other one goes like this. So we was pullin’ the dirt out of this one because the other one had water. In the wintertime we’d work twelve hours, seven days, because they didn’t want to shut it down because it was so cold it’d freeze the conveyors. Because when we dumped, it had to go almost over half a mile up on the conveyors like that, to another place, there where they separated the sand and the rock. That was our job down there.
Muñoz: What did they call that job?
Torrez: Well, we just hauled the sand and separated, because it had like a big deal where we’d dump, and it was deep in there. So anyway, some of it would separate there, because they had different deals-sand, different rocks-and then it’d go up there. They had a guy that put the light on is. Like green would be you can go in there and dump. If you had a red light, you couldn’t leave and get up on top, because something would happen [unclear]. And it happened to me. I came in there, we used to like to shoot dice right after lunch at a shop over there about halfway down to the job. We was haulin’ ten miles, see. And we’d stop there and play dice. So I went up there, I got up there almost lunchtime, and the guy had the green light on me. I dumped it and turned around and went back as fast as I could, so I could get in a game. So when I got over there, everybody was like they were in church.
Muñoz: Quiet, huh?
Torrez: Yeah, real quiet, and looking at me like I’d done something wrong. Well, it happened that this guy wasn’t supposed to be down there in the bottom, and he got covered up with a bunch of dirt-maybe about ten tons or something, the one that I dumped-some of it, anyway. His name was Martin. So I heard the radios talking about"Martin, Martin; Martin, Martin; Martin, Martin." Martin [unclear] (phone rings).
Muñoz: So did the guy make it?
Torrez: No way.
Muñoz: Not with ten tons of dirt, huh? Oh my goodness.
Torrez: They told me what happened, that I was legal to dump it.
Muñoz: But you wouldn’t have known-the light was green.
Torrez: The light was green for me.
Muñoz: And what was he doing down there?
Torrez: Well, he was a laborer. He was supposed to help clean it up during lunch hour. And what happened, see, my load went through, and part of it [unclear], because those things were like this, see. And there were three parts to it, you know. And it hangs up there, wet and everything, you know. It hangs up there, and what they do is when they get ready to work, they’ve got a vibrator that hits the thing like that, see. (hits one fist into his other open palm) So he didn’t wait for that. He got in there. I don’t know what the deal was. Maybe it was his time to go. But that’s what happened [unclear] vibrator.
Muñoz: You were talking about how some of these people that were from Flagstaff that drove up to Page got in car accidents on weekends, for various reasons. Seven days a week, that’s a lot of hours! And seven days a week! Wow. Okay.
Torrez: What it was, see, the rest of the days they had three shifts: They had the day shift, swing shift, and graveyard. But they took that shift off because they couldn’t afford to let that freeze, you know. They’d just get a little time to put [grease?] on it, on those conveyors and everything. That’s why they run just two shifts.
Muñoz: Oh, they only had two shifts going.
Torrez: In the wintertime.
Muñoz: And in the summertime they had three shifts. Oh wow. Okay. Would you say they paid you pretty good for doing what you did?
Torrez: Oh yeah.
Muñoz: And you worked twelve hours a day?
Torrez: In the winter, but during the regular shift, it’d be eight.
Muñoz: Twelve hours in the winter, and regular hours, eight, in the summer. And you said you were living in Page at the time. Describe Page to me at that time. What did it look like when you were working there?
Torrez: (chuckles) Well, when we was working down there, we were working right inside the canyon. You didn’t get out. You went down there in the morning, you didn’t get out until your shift was out. And you had to come out in those cages, see. That was about it. When we was over there on the other side, we had our trucks, and we’d drive our cars up there to the shop. Then from there we’d get our trucks.
Muñoz: Where was the shop located?
Torrez: It was up there close to Wahweap.
Muñoz: Then Wahweap, you have to come around and get to where the city ends?
Torrez: Well, no, there was a place up there we’d get to the highway-you know, the one that goes to Utah. And we’d get out and come around, because the bridge was already done, so we could come up, down the highway, and into Page with our cars.
Muñoz: You started to say something about trailers. Was there a lot of trailers?
Torrez: Yeah, and then they started puttin’ trailers in there. I came over to Flag and I found one of them repossessed, and I bought a trailer [unclear] up there.
Muñoz: Did they start going to school there?
Torrez: Yeah, [unclear]. Sylvia was too small yet.
Mrs. Torrez: [unclear] first grade.
Torrez: Oh, was it?
Muñoz: Your coworkers and the people working, was it a diversity of people? Were there blacks, whites, Españoles?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: So what was the highest labor worker, an Americano or Native American-did you say that?
Torrez: What it was, see, like for example, they got ironworkers-they pay 'em more than a truck driver, they pay more than a laborer. And then they got the electricians. They got bigger pay. And [unclear] they pay more.
Muñoz: What was the last one that you said that got paid more?
Torrez: Electricians and ironworkers and probably the bosses.
Muñoz: Alright.
Torrez: Mechanics.
Muñoz: So what did you guys do after work? Did you find entertainment over there to keep you guys busy from your work-or were you so tired...?
Torrez: Well, when we got off from work, we went home and went to bed, because it was already almost twelve. By the time we went to bed, it was after midnight.
Muñoz: Right. So you kind of slept the whole rest of the day?
Torrez: No, [unclear]. Well, there was maybe guys that wanted to be over there in the bar. That was different.
Muñoz: They had a bar in Page?
Torrez: Oh yeah. That bar caused a lot of people to get hurt and get killed and everything.
Muñoz: Really? You mean labor workers?
Torrez: You remember the story about the Padillas? Frank Padilla.
Muñoz: No, I don’t remember any story.
Torrez: Got killed over there.
Muñoz: In Page? I don’t remember hearing.
Torrez: A guy from Williams killed him over there. They were fighting over a girl.
Muñoz: Those girls! They just cause all kinds of trouble.
Torrez: Girls caused a lot of trouble over there.
Muñoz: Were there women living in Page?
Torrez: Oh yeah, all kinds of people-little ones, big ones. They got over there to [unclear] and Frank got killed, and then the brothers got into there. One of 'em got shot-lost fingers and stuff like that.
Muñoz: And lost fingers?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: Mexicanos against Mexicanos? Is that what you’re saying?
Torrez: Yeah. The guy that killed Frank, his name was Manuel Cortez. Frank Padilla used to own a service station over there. Remember over there on the main highway, where the depot was?
Muñoz: On 66, uh-huh.
Torrez: Yeah. Remember, there was a little trailer there they called....
Muñoz: Snack Shack?
Torrez: Yeah. And then there was a service station there. Frank kept that station for a long, long time.
Muñoz: And they killed him.
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: What year was that?
Torrez: I’d say in ’59, almost ’60. Maybe in the sixties.
Muñoz: Would that be the only killing done over there?
Torrez: Oh no, there was always fighting-Indians fighting and everything.
Muñoz: Okay, so I asked you about diverse groups of people, like Mexicans, blacks, Native Americans, Spanish people. Did you guys get along, or were they always fighting against each other?
Torrez: Normal thing, I guess. But there was people there, I don’t know.... See, where I was, we were kind of away from a lot of people, because over there where I was, all we had to do is haul dirt, and that was it. The other ones that were working there was the guys that loaded us.
Muñoz: So you guys were divided? I mean, there was a barracks for.... No?
Torrez: No, we just had the trucks, and we’d get in there, and they’d load us, come back and dump, and go back.
Muñoz: Wow, I didn’t know Page was such a booming thing, all kinds of stuff happened.
Torrez: Oh, there was all kinds of things going on. A lot of work.
Muñoz: There was a question I’ve been thinking of. We talked about you worked as a laborer. You retired with thirty-two years of truck driving, right?
Torrez: Yeah.
Muñoz: So when you were growing up, we talked about you working at the slaughterhouse. Is that the only job you held when you were young, or did you hold other jobs when you were young?
Torrez: Well, I worked for Northern Arizona Gas after that, and after the slaughterhouse, you know. And then I drove the lady, like a chauffeur, for Mrs. Riordan.
Muñoz: Oh, you were a chauffeur for Mrs. Riordan. Okay.
Torrez: Yeah, on Sunday I had to take her to church and everything. Washed windows over there at the old house, that big house. Sometimes they’d put me to pull dandelions out of the grass. All that, you know, little jobs. And Northern Arizona Gas was their property anyway. See, I used to have to deliver tanks, like twenty-two-gallon bottles-tanks, you know-and I had to deliver 'em in the winter and summer because the natural gas wasn’t there yet, so I had to deliver them tanks. The winter, they’d call me, I’d go over there to the house and have those tanks in the pickup, ready. I’d go to [unclear] and be over there, and there’d be a storm, wind would be blowin’ the snow. I’d have to go out there and put some tanks around. Run out of gas.
Muñoz: Alright. I think I’ve concluded my oral history, [More-eye?]. I guess I could sit here and listen to you all day. So I want to thank you very much for sharing.
Torrez: I used to go out to some places, you know, over there in Walnut Canyon. Go over there and ride horses with a guy over there, and then come over here. Me and Mike used to come over here to Bill Graves’. He had a ranch over there by Parker, Parks, back over in there. And he had cattle over there and everything.
Muñoz: Oh. Bill Graves. Let me see, I think I have....
Torrez: The church is over there. That road’s named Bill Graves. Right there, that church over there, Catholic church.
Muñoz: Floyd Deming. Did you know Floyd Deming?
Torrez: I don’t think so.
Muñoz: Okay. Alright, I’m gonna....